I am a believer in the notion that things happen for a reason. I used to think that to be someone who believes in this is to be someone doesn’t believe in mistakes.

According to an online dictionary, a mistake is defined as an error in action, calculation, opinion, or judgment caused by poor reasoning, carelessness or insufficient knowledge; a misunderstanding or misconception. Yeah, I definitely do believe in mistakes.

At this point in my life it’s hard to see how the little decisions I have made may or may not mean something. Up until this point, my idea of love has changed drastically since my teen days, where they were based on ideals in Hollywood movies. Now? Well now is much different. Lets just say that a small part of me is still the hopeless romantic, but the larger more evident part looks more like a female version of Adam Sandler from the “Wedding Singer”, belting out the words to ‘Love Stinks’ at the top of my lungs.

If there is anything I know for sure in life, it’s that amongst human kind there is one common thread that ties us all together: Relationships. Whether it be romantic, friendship or family – we are all constantly thinking about our relationships with other people, and constantly trying figure out who we are. In every day instances, relationships are consistently a common topic whether it is between girlfriends at a coffee shop or cell phone conversations overheard while walking down the street. I find myself always wanting to hear these conversations, and most times, upon eaves dropping form time to time, I realize that everyone seems to go through the same things. I look out my apartment window in south end Halifax, towards a high rise building right beside me. I see blocks lights coming from certain apartments, and I think to myself “inside that apartment, someone has a totally different life, with their own relationships, and their own problems”.

It’s the relationships I have and who I meet a long the way that makes life colorful. When it comes to dating, I have had my fair share of characters. For me, it is these experiences—both big and small that have made me a confused, but enlightened individual today. I find myself quite guilty of mulling over the “what ifs” and “what could have been”s; seeking comfort in bottles of wine, encouraging friends, and consoling music. I guess at this point in my life, after being through the ringer of disappointments, I bear a close resemblance to John Cusack’s character in High Fidelity; revisiting those past experiences and wondering what it all means. So in true dedication to the nature of ‘High Fidelity’, I now present to you: my top 5.

The First Love

And so it begins. The first love is not that boy you kissed when you were 3, or even that boy you had a crush on in junior high, who you’d always wish would notice you. The first love is the one who finally looked at you the same way you looked at him. The one that brings back a time when things were simple, and love was not some complex ideal to wrap your head around, but it was something right in front of you.

It’s true when they say you’ll never forget your first love – regardless of how it ended, or how long it lasted. How could you? It seems that the first love is really only the first love because he opened up your eyes to what love is. For me – love came quickly, thrived and self destructed over a period of 3 years. These 3 years of my life were some of the worst and best days of my life. But most of all, the first love also stands out for many because its not only the first time that you gave your heart to someone, but it’s the first time they broke it just as fast as they stole it.

When I experienced love for the first time, I was 17 years old. I met someone slightly older, who was in college and who actually noticed me for me. At the time, things moved quickly. I had friends who had been in long term relationships since the 10th grade and earlier, and in great contrast to them, my relationship progressed at faster pace. Looking back I don’t know if it was a blessing or a curse to have had opened up my heart so quickly and to trust someone with everything so fast. I do know that regardless of how badly it ended, he was the only guy who ever dared to love me.

Falling in love at 17 showed me that love is not logical or predictable. You can not predict what will happen, even though you feel so certain that it’s perfect and would last forever (and sometimes, it might). The fact is that people never stop growing up, and for me it was growing up and growing apart that tore me apart from my first love. In the end, the first love makes you want to hold on to those memories. Memories that can only be described as bittersweet.

The Repeat Offender

While the first love is the one that got away, the repeat offender can otherwise be considered the one that keeps on getting away. I suppose that if I did believe in mistakes, he would surely be my favourite mistake.

Like a drug, you become addicted fast. It’s not obvious right away what kind of effect the repeat offender has on you; you just go with it, because you love the way he makes you feel. He is like an escape, the kind that you don’t even have to leave the room for, the kind that makes the world disappear, even just for one night.

The repeat offender is indeed the essence of an addiction: easy to fall back into and hard to quit. You know it’s bad for you, the signs are there – just like the pictures of cancerous lungs on cigarette packages, but you don’t read them. You just take a deep breathe and inhale. And even when you quit, after a hard time when the world doesn’t seem to get you, you will always find yourself reaching for that cigarette.

During these times, I crave an escape that allowed me to be 100% myself – not just a weaker dosage. I often find myself feeling like an alien amongst humans – living in my own reality while the humans are looking at me like I have 3 heads. It’s the repeat offender that provides me the escape I need to feel like I wasn’t an alien on a lonely planet after all. He’s charming, honest and unapologetic about life – someone who lives in the present, and isn’t phased by any social pressures or expectations. He is certainly not the boy I would take home to my parents and it was this quality that made me fall for him even harder.

Its only a matter of time when you are with this type of guy until you realize that in reality, all you are to one another is an escape – a brief moment in time when things make sense. Just two people joy riding in a car, with no destination or map for guidance, until eventually—someone jumps out and you are eventually forced to face your own separate and drastically different lives.

The trouble is that as creatures of habit, we always want to escape sometimes. And I still to this day, have no clue how to quit this habit. But I have come to realize that the repeat offender does not mean to offend at all. After all – it is always my choice to pick up that cigarette.

In reality – the repeat offender is me.

The Question Mark

When numerous let downs leave you feeling bitter, fragile and with the habit of comparing ever guy to the one before, along the way a guy will occasionally come around who you seem to connect to, but don’t really know why. This guy, in my case, was one that in the beginning seemed to be relatable, but in his confused state of mind makes you wonder what you ever really saw in him, and what he is really teaching you.

The question mark is a mere glimpse of someone you stole for a night, a week, or a month that makes you question everything – mostly his sincerity. In comparison to others, the question mark stands out as the ‘one of these things is not like the other’ type.

The question mark will likely never win me over again. His destructive nature soon becomes transparent, and the question becomes “Do I want to allow myself to be used?”. Ultimately the question mark does not know what he wants out of life. I don’t think I will ever learn what is going on in the head of the question mark, but I have learned to look at the world differently, question everything and that no one is what they seem.

The Charmer

We are all guilty of it. Swooning over compliments and loving every ounce of attention we get from a certain guy—the guy that seems to have all the right words at the right time. It’s the Charmer’s words that reel you in, but they may or may not keep you there. His words persuade you and seduce, making you feel like the only girl in the room. His words are perfectly crafted and clever, purely designed to grab your attention. But are they true?

It’s hard to not think about poets when you think of the charmer, but the difference between a poet and the charmer type, is that the charmer uses his words to use you. Poets simply His words are both is offence and his defense, and they always have a purpose. Most times that purpose is not what his words reflect, and in moments of weakness I have been guilty of falling into them – knowing that they are nothing more than eloquent lies. But as creatures of desire – sometimes believing lies is better than being alone. It is during this time, that the Charmer thrives, and all you can do is decide weather or not you want to believe the lies again.

The Best Friend

We all know about “the friend zone”: the typical situation of a guy developing feelings for his close female friend of many years. Attraction is all of a sudden there, and innocent flirtation leads the boy into thinking that maybe – just maybe, they are more than just friends.

The best friend is the best friend for a reason. No matter what, the best friend can always finish your sentences, and know when something is wrong. For me, my best friend is the rock in my life. The guy who despite all your flaws will always be there, even if he doesn’t understand them. When I started to realize that my best friend had feelings for me, it was hard not consider him. In principle, he did embody everything that others have not: trust, loyalty, consistency. Yet no matter how much I try to embrace these positive attributes, something is missing.

You know the best friend will one day be the best for somebody. But you cannot force yourself to admit that something is there when it isn’t. He isn’t the best for me. And there is nothing harder then to be the one to disappoint someone you care about. So when it comes to the best friend, handle with care. I know watch my words, and keep my distance when it’s needed because at the end of the day, you need a best friend.

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Although I have only been in love once, my heart has certainly seen its fair share of flutters, let downs, wrenches and aches. Bruised but not broken, I have come to learn that while I may appear bitter and fragile—especially after a couple drinks, I am a stronger person because of these heart aches. And while one person has stole my heart, and successfully broken it; others have not yet had the chance.

I realize that there are some people in life who have it set in the stars – they meet someone, fall in love, and stay in love for the rest of their lives. Others make mistakes. For me, it is not the people on my top 5 that are mistakes to me. The mistakes for me are trusting too fast, allowing myself to be fooled, misjudging situations and not quitting when I know its bad for me. But these mistakes should not be looked upon in shame.

I believe it’s the mistakes in life that lead us to something beautiful. Whether that something beautiful is found in ourselves, or if they lead to someone else, in the end it is found. And those in ours lives that have hurt us should not be seen as regrets, but merely a compilation of characters that bring you up, bring you down and make you able to get back up again.

After all, how can you have a beautiful ending, if you don’t make beautiful mistakes?

Cassie's Main Points

1. If you stay away from McDonald’s long enough, you’ll forget about the hamburgers.
2. She was probably going to buy drugs.
3. Just because it’s easy does not mean it’s good for you.
4. Awkward is a belief, not an action.
5. The stop-light approach/ red flag

Sarah’s Version:

In our lives there are many sayings, phrases and words of advice that often steer the ship of our everyday lives. These sayings can be universal, or told to you from others in your close circle of friends and family. At first, these mottos seem cliché, and you often think to yourself “When will I ever actually live my life by these sayings”. Its funny how life works because eventually you find yourself relating back to these little words of advice – even if you don’t know it.

If you stay away from McDonald’s long enough, you’ll forget about the hamburgers. Really this saying is a clever way of saying “Out of sight out of mind”. This philosophy has been uttered to me in many ways from friends and family, especially when overcoming an addiction or heart break. If you ignore him, you’ll eventually get over him! At the end of the day we as humans often want to cling on to the people that may have once provided us happiness. When they turn out to not be good for you in the end, we have difficulty disconnecting them from our daily lives. The whole idea of staying friends with ex boyfriends boggles me. Is it even possible? Without digging up old feelings and falling back into old patterns? It then can be said that to truly forget about “the hamburgers” of life – the events and the people who blind side you and turn out to be bad for you, you need to stay away, and cut off all ties to those events, or those people.

Just because it’s easy does not mean it’s good for you. This one I had to learn on my own the hard way. Growing up in a small town, with parents who had very set ways in terms of how they saw me growing up – I was more than often encouraged to take the “easy” way out. To them this meant going to a university in a practical and reliable program that would make me good money. The thought of taking the year off to travel and see the world never even occurred to me. It wasn’t even an option in my parent’s eyes. However, looking back, I cannot imagine what that could have done for me. While university is useful, it often feels like an imaginary prison, full of people who so desperately want to be free, but somehow feel tied to the institution by their own expectations for themselves. The point is that most times in life the situations or decisions that make our heads pound, usually end up being what we learn the most from. In the end, it’s the easy ways out that may leave us feeling like we are floating through life, letting it pass us by.

There are some people out there who are meant to have children. To take of them, raise them and generally know what to do with them. I am NOT one of these people.
While there are a lot of things that make me uncomfortable—heights, the dark, and public speaking to name a few—there is nothing more uncomfortable then taking care of a living human being belonging to someone else, who carried them for nine months.
To me, taking care of a baby is a lot like walking through an expensive store. Though I love to browse, ‘ohhhing’ and ‘aahhhhing’ as I go, when it comes to trusting myself around fragile things, it is usually much better to admire from afar rather then picking up, or even touching anything.

Growing up as a girl, we are often exposed to the child caring tendencies—and may not even know it—playing ‘house’ and owning dolls. But while other girls were baby sitting by the time they were 15, my only experience with babies was that of caring for my “Baby-so-real” doll—which was made to look and feel like a real baby. While I loved this toy, the doll was certainly not treated like a real baby.
I have a few baby cousins, and have been very guilty of “awwwing” in public when I see a freshly born baby all bundled up. But when it comes to hands on experience, I was certainly not experienced. So you can understand my anxiety when invited to help care for my friend’s eight-month old niece.

Rebecca was for sure the best candidate for me to interact with – full of expressions, noises and bouncy baby movements. While she is not old enough yet to talk, her curious and mischievous made for never a dull moment while watching her observe the world around her.

My first duty was to sit with her on her play blanket and simply keep her entertained. This was an easy task, but when Rebecca would get bored with whatever toy she was interested in, her expressions would go from playful to unimpressed. This made me feel like I was being put on the spot during a debate, and I would quickly try to amuse her again for fear of her breaking into tears. It was like trying to impress an authority figure – little did I know, that in this situation, the “authority figure” was me. The fact that I could not gage what the baby was thinking, or what would happen next, filled me up with nervousness like a balloon. However, I do admit, it was kind of fun too.

Holding a baby to me was the duty I feared the most. The idea that you are holding a tiny being, only eight months old, just made me feel very nervous – I was about to have someone’s whole world in my hands. So you can then understand my shock when my friend Heather candidly said “Here, take the baby” and simply passed me the squirming eight-month old. I froze – holding the surprisingly compliant baby in front of me as if I was just handed a two million dollar piece of silver wear. I was inwardly panicing, but soon realized there wasn’t much to it. Seeing others hold babies so naturally, made me feel as if I was lacking some sort of motherly coordination. But Rebecca just looked at me, like anyone else in her life who would hold her all the time – no judgments, no pressure, just pure trust.

After the ice breaking experience of holding her, I soon realized that I wasn’t as nervous as I thought I was going to be. What made me more uncomfortable was watching an experienced Aunt Heather interact with Rebecca. I couldn’t help but bite my lower lip, and hold in grunts of anxiety when she would pick her up and move her around in fluid motions, which contrasted intensely with my overly cautious manner. An example of this would be when Heather would toss Rebecca in the air and swiftly catch her while making googly baby noises making the baby chuckle with delight. Or when she would lay Rebecca on her lap, holding her tight and positioning her so she was practically upside down—another thing the baby seemed to love. I just kept thinking to myself “And I had trouble just holding her...”

In the end I learned a lot about my uncomfortable tendencies around babies, as well as how uncomfortable I get when I observe others interact with them. While the experience did not cure my bizarre fear of caring for a child, it act as an ice breaker to help ease into similar situations that might happen later in life. As for babies, I will always love watching them observe the world in a way that makes you feel like an innocent kid again – with no negativity, just pure curiosity.

Anna Bartanova is a woman of many colourful words, naturally spewing from her like breath. Speaking with an unidentifiable European accent, her speech is a mix of various flavours and cultures. She has long black hair that shimmers with hints of grey and piercing aqua marine eyes that occasionally change colour. She lives in a loft apartment with brightly coloured walls and endless nooks which store her many books, albums and miscellaneous items like clay pots and coloured vases. Her space is a sanctuary, providing the backdrop for her worldly stories and showcasing the familiar strangers of her life, who to her, are her only family.

An independent force to be reckoned with, she is more of a storm than a woman, with an unpredictable and unapologetic demeanour. She dresses herself in 70’s-inspired attire that although out of date, is a breath of fresh air in a sea of stuffy business suits. She works odd jobs that change from month to month but are enough to sustain her lifestyle of watching old movies and reading mystery novels. She smokes cigarettes with old fashioned cigarette holders, which she waves when she is excited. She chews on the end as she hunches over, reading tarot cards for those lucky enough to hear about her from others who have met her.

Though she has not traveled the world, she speaks of it as if she has been there hundreds of times. She tells the stories of others, yet never her own, leaving those who meet her with a sense of intrigue and curiosity. Full of chatty energy, many who meet her may think she is an actress, but she does not need a stage to be theatrical. Life to her is simple, but enthralling, and she finds pleasure simple things like meeting strangers, visiting art galleries and watching old movies. She is a colourful spirit who will bring a touch of sun to any drab winter day.
Anna Bartanova is certainly the essence of drama, leaving a path of reactions wherever she goes. Those who meet her will never know her well, but will never forget her.